


dirty tactics

by kiafeles



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, P5A, Unreliable Narrator, references to the anime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 11:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16196915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiafeles/pseuds/kiafeles
Summary: One phone call is all they need.Set after Sae's palace.





	dirty tactics

**Author's Note:**

> I have quite a few thoughts about the girls and Akechi, and about the PT's master plan, so I tried to fill in some holes.  
> And just an FYI, this makes reference to that one extra scene in P5A, with Akechi and the PT in the cafe after Ren's capture.

The last time that any of them talk to Akechi before they encounter him in that twisted cognitive engine room, spewing vitriol like a snake does venom, not even their leader is aware of the interaction. He reacts calmly about most things—he has to, to keep his head above water when they’re up against a deadline with emphasis on the ‘dead’ part, but Makoto knows they’re aiming for an easier afterthought forgiveness, rather than an ill-gotten permission. Even Yusuke, the easiest to convince of far-fetched plans stewed in a skeptic’s intrigue, yells at them for taking too many risks when he somehow finds out about their actions a week later, although he promises not to be a whistleblower.

 

Makoto’s still not that accustomed to breaking the rules, but if her short but insightful stint as a Phantom Thief has taught her anything, it’s how to become adept at dodging expectations, even if it would damage her leader’s trust in doing so.

 

She wonders if Ren’s cocky smiles come from confidence in playing the martyr, or if he’s screaming inside, like she is. When he comes home, viciously bruised and unwillingly battered, she feels spikes of guilt mixed with new waves of regret at taking advantage of his unwilling ignorance in such a way. She can only hope their precautions pay off in the end, silencing the most pressing of their incoming, invisible concerns.

 

Ren’s not very coherent at the moment, regardless. His consciousness returns in fits and bursts, and Sojiro mostly condemns him to bed rest. It grants them time they’d otherwise spend wastefully fussing.

 

Although if she’s giving credit where credit is due, it wasn’t even her idea. It was Futaba’s. The younger girl had phoned Makoto the night before the advent of their Big Unnecessarily Reckless Plan, even though it was far too late for either girl to be reasonably awake. But Makoto, too caught up in the tight binds of anxious nerves, could only feel relief at the chance to speak with someone equally as tepid. Worries and what-ifs of what’s to come, spiraling in black shadow shapes in the darkness of her room, would only have prompted endless tossing and turning, so she takes the train back to Yongen-Jaya. She sits in Futaba’s room, rubbing the worn threads of Futaba’s comforter between calloused hands.

 

On that night, Futaba tells Makoto of her plan within a plan. Her voice, hushed to keep the curled ball of cat fur on the bed from waking, details her fears.

 

“We’re missing something otherwise,” Futaba repeats, her tone cold and furious. “If we want this to work, we can’t just drop him cold. We need to play it out to the end.”

 

“Are you sure about this?” Makoto feels an overwhelming hesitation, alarm bells that reverberate in her skull. She’s run headfirst into half-cooked plans before, and all that had done for her was exponentially increase the likelihood of kidnapping by mafia. She doesn’t wish for a repeat of that incident with a slightly more legal, albeit equally as corrupt, enemy.

 

On the other hand, a pushover isn’t what they need right now. Makoto considers verbalizing her fears anyway.

 

“We need to tell Haru,” she says instead, when Futaba doesn’t yield.

 

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

 

Haru bottles her emotions up, locks them in an expensive safe with seven layers of security, and covers it up behind flowers tenderly grown in soft hands, until the times when her anger has opportunity to flourish in their stead. Those opportunities are few and far between, but mostly show up in Mementos, or palaces, against particularly stubborn shadows. Funneling her anger in the real world might not be too bad for her, even if it’s decorated with a polite facade.

 

“If anyone can fool him, she can,” Makoto continues.

 

“I know that. But he knows that too, so he might not believe her directly. But he knows—he _thinks_  he knows, how I’d really react if I knew. That’s how we get him.” They’d told Akechi about Futaba’s palace, after all. In considering the facts, Makoto welds the pieces of this subsidiary plan together.

 

There’s a bit of selfish intent in there when she really breaks down Futaba’s reasoning, but Makoto doesn’t feel like calling it out. Pot meet kettle, and all that.

 

They call Haru up and tell her about it anyway, and Makoto gauges her reaction. It’s only the strained smile, pixelated in the video chat open on Futaba’s screen, that proves she’ll keep this secret to her grave, should it be necessary.

 

“What if he comes in person to check up on us? What do we do then?” Haru asks, sipping tea that costs more than Makoto’s family name.

 

“He won’t,” Makoto says. “If he thinks he’s won, he has no more need of us. We’re nothing but gum under his shoes at that point.”

 

“Why not simply kill us first, though? If he’s so intent on carrying out whatever plot he’s contrived, then I don’t see why we’re not next. It isn’t as though Ren is the first.”

 

Makoto winces.

 

“He sounds too arrogant for that,” Futaba says. Her mouse clicks furiously, and the sound waves of his hacked phone log glare up at them for a moment, before she furiously swipes it away to uncover Haru's face once more. “He would have called the cops on us already if he were really serious, but he’s just reveling in it all right now.”

 

Makoto grits her teeth, uncertainty swirling around her, even as their path forward solidifies. “We’re just tying up some loose ends. He doesn’t think he needs to deal with us, since Joker was enough of a shock to supposedly pull the hood over our heads, but it would be too suspicious if we stopped communicating altogether. ”

 

“Plus I want to fuck with him,” Futaba says. A featherman figure bounces back and forth between her two hands, and she grips it so hard Makoto feels the mismatched limbs, still there from Yusuke’s tampering, will pop off.

 

Makoto closes her eyes, clears her throat, and says, “Yes. We want to, um, fuck with him.”

 

Long clean fingernails tap on her cup, and Haru sets it down out of frame, before her cheeks glow pink, a smile unzipping out of her.

 

“It sounds wonderful, then.”

 

The news announcement comes the next day, and with it come tears, crocodile ones mixed into the real deal until Makoto isn’t sure if she’s acting anymore. To be fair, it’s only Futaba’s close analysis of the cameras and Ren’s zombified form, stumbling into LeBlanc behind Sae, that proves their success. His face, screwed up in anguish that Makoto’s never been privileged enough to witness before, is enough motivation for her to sneak off when Sojiro shoos her and Futaba from LeBlanc.

 

Haru meets them at Sojiro’s front door, dropped off by her driver, and from there Futaba starts calling.

 

He doesn’t answer at first, and Makoto feels a mixed relief and apprehension at the notion that he’s forgotten about the Phantom Thieves so easily already. If Akechi has thrown them away without a second thought, ready to relinquish his ties to the the remnants of an apparent waste of his time, then they don’t need to pretend to do anything but grieve. But it makes his movements more unpredictable, regardless of their abilities to spy on him, to leave him unattended. Sometimes it’s better to play things up for what they are worth, and the petty, ugly part of Makoto that comes out when she thinks of her father’s death or her sister’s crueler moments don’t let her rest.

 

“Call him again.”

 

Two hours of endless ringing divvied up between their three phones, and he finally answers Futaba’s cell. Makoto sits on Futaba’s bed and Haru clutches a pillow beside her, both girl’s tensing at the moment of truth. Futaba, legs pulled up to her knees and held there with one hand, glances between them and the device quickly.

 

Akechi Goro sounds as though he never expected a living person to exist on the other side of the line.

 

“ _F_ _utaba-chan?_ ” he says finally, his voice a cocktail of wary confusion with a pinch of underlying cockiness. Futaba places him on speaker. Beside Makoto, Haru clutches the pillow tighter. The lower half of her face disappears behind it, and Makoto thinks she hears the crack of teeth.

 

She knows they have to be careful about this. They all do. Akechi isn’t stupid, and a liar can sniff out other liars like a bee guides its brethren to fresh flower fields. But they’ve practiced. They know what to say.

 

“ _Why are you calling?_ ” he says, tone carefully neutral. Makoto wonders if he’s deciding whether or not to brag, or if he’s really just stumped at their boldness. “ _You’ve been—you’re practically the only thing in my voicemail at this point. Are you all right?_ ”

 

Makoto counts herself paradoxically lucky that she has seen, before the chaos of the past few weeks, the sleaze behinds his words and actions. He’s either too polite to be truthful or suspiciously blunt, too impartial to show his feelings, and overall too dangerous. His voice oozes ichor but it’s poisoned and gaudy like his persona. Everything about him is mechanically pleasant, and fake.

 

Futaba visibly bites her tongue. Makoto thinks then and there that she might spoil the plan for them. Anger, roaring and blue hot like the fire of Johanna, boils up within her, and she doesn’t doubt that Futaba’s eyes, hidden behind glinting lenses, reflect the same emotions.

 

Haru’s hands reach out, one soft and gentle on her own and the other on Futaba’s knee, and it grounds her. _How dare he,_ she thinks nonetheless, her lips pressed to pale skin, cutting a line across her face.

 

“Ren hasn’t come home. Why haven’t you been answering? The news—” Futaba starts, and her voice grows small, her words like droplets, percussing over the line. “It’s not—it’s not real, right? You got him out? It’s not real.”

 

“ _Ah_ ,” he says, and Makoto hears his relief. It’s cautious, yes, but not dimly so. He may not fully believe what he’s hearing, but he’s willing to play along. A switch in his cadence flips, and a voice straight out of his interviews, slightly apologetic and oozing, continues. “ _I’m so sorry. I did my best, but…_ ”

 

He pauses, as if to catch his composure, and Futaba roars.

 

“You _tried?_  You said you were going to bring him home. Why didn’t you call? We could have done something.”

 

“ _No_ ,” a single note, sharp but cracking.  “ _You couldn’t have done anything._ ”

 

Futaba and Haru glance at each other. Futaba slams a hand on her desk for good measure. “Ren would never kill himself. Why would they say that—?”

 

“ _Futaba-chan, please listen to what I have to say._ ”

 

Futaba goes silent, and he takes a deep breath, as if coming to a decision.

 

Surprising. Makoto prides herself on preparedness, but it appears Akechi’s ability to ad-lib on the strength of morals he hypocritically dismisses is unparalleled, and he employs the weapon liberally now.

 

Haru’s eyes grow cold. She must be thinking the same.

 

“ _H_ _e_   _didn't commit suicide. They must have killed him the moment they realized he’d never talk. I found only a body._ ” His voice grows soft, conciliatory. It turns Makoto’s stomach stormy. “ _He can rest easy, knowing he didn’t expose your identities, at least._ ”

 

It’s a flimsy lie, a subtly selfish one, but it isn’t as though he needs to carefully craft them anymore. In his eyes, he’s won.

 

It’s all they really need to be sure. Like spiders, the three of them have unwittingly wrapped him in their web, hypnotising him with the realistic consequences and mild inconveniences of his arrogant, self-granted wish.

 

To him it must feel like the tide has abandoned the moon to answer his calling.

 

Futaba chirps, a dying sound, and Makoto knows the memories she must be calling up for this extended performance. She’s healing, reintegrating and finding community, but her mother’s death is fresh and raw, the mental carcass decaying much slower than a real one ever could.

 

It’s funny how Akechi must know the many sources of her anguish, and yet never could really know her, or her expressions of it.

 

“He was killed?” Haru says, voice just loud enough for Akechi to detect, enough to realize that Futaba isn’t alone. Haru’s hands are drawn up to her face in shock. Perhaps she’s more of a method actor than Makoto first assumed.

 

Akechi clears his throat. “ _I_ _’m sorry I haven’t been able to see any of you. I’ve been quite busy, dealing with the fallout. The amount of paperwork surrounding this case is atrocious, and I’ve been under a lot of scrutiny._ ” The words are impatient, in a way that feels a touch too impersonal.

 

Makoto’s fist clenches in her palm, and she primes herself to punch the bed, simply to let her feelings out. She’s sure if Ryuji was here, he would have done it for her.

 

Haru simply drops her hands, her face blank once more.

 

“ _But, ah, you don’t need to worry about any of that it. I’ll take care of everything, believe me. Don’t do anything._ ”

 

 _Don’t do anything, don’t do anything,_  he had repeated. Don’t do anything, and fall into hell for me, easy, just like that. Rest easy in complacency. Just like in the cafe, he sticks to his script.

 

“We’ll leave it to you, Goro-kun,” Haru says. Makoto internally promises to take her and the other girls out to practice aikido together this weekend. Haru especially will need a violent release of frustration after this.

 

“We left this to you already and look where it got us!” Futaba’s rebellious tone slides in, exactly where they need it. They can’t give in too easy, after all. The more believable they are, the less likely Akechi might think to intervene.

 

This is perhaps the most vital part of their plan, the part they discussed with most detail. Drag him to the edge of the brink and grab him by the hair, force his head down, compel him to stare down into the abyss of his own creation.

 

Akechi grows silent. For anyone else, it would be a condemnation of guilt. Makoto wonders if there is any of that double-edged emotion left in him, after all they suspect he has done. She imagines him smiling, toothy and sharklike, and compares it the kind he’d get after successfully dispelling a shadow in Sae’s palace, and then another, of him hiding his face, after one of Ren’s groan-worthy jokes. It feels wrong, as though the images fail to interlock on the youthful a face. Pity mixes, greasy like gasoline, into her righteous fury.

 

Let him gloat, she thinks over it all. It’s akin to rotting, in the most final, self-afflicted way.

 

“Futaba,” she says, and Futaba dutifully hands the phone over. It’s her time to step forward into the stagelight.

 

“Akechi,” she begins. “We still don’t know who sold us out. But it’s become a priority, more so now that Ren’s been...killed.”

 

He pauses.

 

“ _You don’t have any suspicions? None at all?_ ”

 

“Of course not!” She says, before gasping. Keep herself on the edge of her supposed composure. Feed him, just enough to lead him on. “How could we? For all we know, someone on the police force has the Meta-Nav and knew to be in the right place at the right time. We can’t say anything for sure.”

 

He hums in thought. Ever the detective prince. In the face of hardship, he lingers on the absolutes, dares to draw conclusions, makes leaps and bounds in deduction, and promises to solve the case.

 

He lies.

 

“ _Well. If that’s what you think, then I’ll keep an eye out. Stay on your toes, regardless._ ”

 

“Akechi,” she says again, in her Queen voice. “I want to know who did this.”

 

“ _Believe me, I feel the same. His death was...quite gruesome, and I’d love nothing more than to find the bastard that caused it, but it isn’t as though you can change the heart of every police officer who was there at the scene. It could have been any one of them, snuck in between the cracks like a viper,_ ” he hums thoughtfully. “ _Perhaps you should ask Sae-san what she thinks. She was also there, after all._ ”

 

Oh, they’d taken advantage of those cracks, all right. Sae especially, dealing with the coroner, making sure that no one person held all pieces of the puzzle, that no one saw the nonexistent body both leave that interrogation room and subsequently cancel its reservation at the morgue.

 

“ _And regardless of….recent developments, our agreement still stands. Let justice run its course, Makoto._ ” He sighs, exhaustion lining each word, the most genuine emotion she has heard from him all night. “ _Sometimes, things happen for a reason. We can only allow ourselves to live with them._ ”

 

Futaba snatches the phone back, and Makoto lets her.

 

“We can’t meet up anymore,” she says, no trace of tears.

 

“ _Oh?_ ”

 

“It would be too suspicious, Goro-kun,” Haru says, and Futaba angles the phone at her. “The police might know who Ren’s friends are. We’re simply trying to be safe. You could be in danger as well if you're seen with us.”

 

“ _You’re right,_ ” he says, after a beat. “ _It could compromise our safety. It would be the best course of action to lay low_   _and carry on as normal_.”

 

“Good,” Futaba says, before sniffing. Imbuing a bit of laughter into her voice, she adds, “So make like a tree and leave, golden boy.”

 

He chuckles, breathy and light like a hospital patient on oxygen. “ _You’re the one who’s been calling me. But very well, I’ll keep you updated on the situation, whenever this all dies down. And Futaba-chan_?”

 

She sniffs, once more for good measure. “Yeah?”

 

“ _I_ _’m sorry again about all that has happened. I promise, I won’t allow any more harm to befall our team._ ”

 

Her laugh is bitter, perhaps too much so, but Makoto doesn't have the energy to criticize her. “We’ve lost so many people, Akechi. What’s one more?”

 

He doesn’t have an answer for that. Makoto feels the bones in her fist creak.

 

To the phone, she says, “Thanks, Akechi. That’s all we need.”

 

And with that Futaba hangs up.

 

There’s more to do, always more to prepare for an inevitable future confrontation after Shido, but they’ve done all they can think of for now.

 

They sit in silence for a moment with that in mind, and then Makoto opens her arms and Futaba molds into her like putty. Haru sits beside her, eyes unseeing.

 

She doesn’t know why Akechi did it. She doesn’t know what compelled him to be the boy he is, to form that false image, to hide the colors of hate beneath words spun like spider silk. She doesn’t know how a father with noble ideals can disappear one day and leave behind two lonely daughters, how any lawyer could forge a suicide note out of spite for a newly orphaned girl, or how a teenager can reconcile her role, however small it may be, in the death of a father so close to salvation. She can’t fathom how a phone app can bend reality, or how a thrice framed boy can summon a smile, cracked as it is, to inspire a misfit group of abused teenagers forward.

 

She does know, however, that she’s willing to give up enough of her pride for pettiness to bend an enemy into submission.

 

The enemy isn’t above dirty tactics, after all. So why should she be?

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter: [@kiafeles](https://twitter.com/kiafeles).


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